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Slender shrub up to 4 m high with many upright stems, or a slender bushy tree up to 6 m high, unarmed or sometimes with paired straight woody spines (persistent peduncle bases?) inserted just above the nodes; indumentum of branchlets, petioles, peduncles and pedicels pubescent with bristle-like or antrorse-appressed or crisped hairs or ± densely tomentose, branchlets and peduncles also with sparsely scattered thicker soft yellowish (glandular?) hairs; older branches glabrescent, lenticellate; leaf axils with dense cushions of hairs, leaf scars raised and shallowly cup-shaped with a dense cushion of hairs in the axils.
Leaves deciduous, dark green above paler beneath, lamina up to 5 × 4 cm, broadly ovate or subtriangular, acute at the apex, rounded at the base and shortly cuneate into the petiole, coarsely serrate-dentate to lobed with 1–3 obtuse teeth or lobes on each side or entire, softly puberulous on both surfaces, usually more densely so on the nerves beneath, with minute sessile glands beneath, reticulation ± conspicuous beneath; petiole up to 1.3 cm long.
Calyx rose-coloured, mauve, lilac or pale green suffused with purple, 8.5–15 mm long and 11–20 mm in diameter, rotate, the tube c. 2.5 × 2.5 mm, the limb shallowly 5-lobed, the lobes broadly ovate-triangular, softly ± densely puberulous and gland-dotted outside; fruiting calyx very accrescent, 20–30 mm in diameter, rotate-patelliform, with a shallowly to distinctly 5-lobed limb, papyraceous, venose with reticulation prominent.
Is cultivated in Tanzania at Amani and probably elsewhere.. It is a shrub or small tree 3–6 m. tall.. Leaves ovate, entire, coarsely toothed or almost lobed, ± 4.5 cm. long, 2.5 cm. wide.. Fruiting calyx pink or pinkish purple, 2–2.5 cm. wide.. Corolla blue or purplish pink.
Cymes axillary, crowded toward the ends of the shoots, 1–3-flowered, up to 4 cm long; peduncles 1–1.8 cm long; bracts up to 7 mm long, obovate-spathulate; pedicels c. 12 mm long, bracteolate, the bracteoles c. 2 mm long, linear.
Fruit c. 7 mm long, obconical, ± flat at the top with 4 horn-like appendages arranged in the shape of a cross, the horns not crested, ± densely puberulous in the upper half, glabrous below.
Filaments glandular towards the base and with a tuft of scales near the insertion, the scales c. 1 mm long, linear, hyaline; anthers c. 1.25 mm long, suborbicular.
Ovary obovoid, densely glandular and pubescent in the upper half; style c. 3 cm long.
Style and stamens long exserted.
